Maeve Binchy - Tara Road

Ria thought that she would love to stay in the salon.

Katie was one of those women who made no small talk and asked no questions. Ria felt no need to apologise for her tired neglected skin, for the lines appearing around her eyes, for the chin that was definitely more slack than it used to be. The healing soothing oils were gently and insistently massaged into the various pressure points, temples, shoulders, scalp. It felt wonderful. Once before Ria had gone for this aromatherapy with Rosemary as a treat, and Ria had promised it to herself every month. Twelve times a year. But she never had. It was too expensive and there were always things she wanted to buy for the children or the house. Her mind started to go down that channel again about what she could afford from now on but she forced it back. Anyway, here in this cool dark place with that wonderful rhythmic massage of her shoulders and back, with that intense satisfying smell of the oils, it was easy to banish worries and to fall into a deep sleep.

'I hardly liked to wake you up.' Carlotta was handing her a glass of fruit juice. 'But otherwise your sleeping pattern will go astray.'

Ria was now her old self again. She got up from her relaxation bed in the pink cotton robe that had been provided and came out to shake Carlotta's hand. 'I can't thank you enough for this terrific welcome. It was exactly what I needed and I didn't know. You couldn't have arranged anything that I would have liked more.'

Carlotta knew genuine appreciation when she saw it. 'Get your clothes on, Ria, and I'll take you home. You're going to have a great summer here, believe me.'

Ria was about to leave when Katie handed her a piece of paper. She wondered if it was some advice about future skin care that she would study later, but she looked at it anyway. It was a bill for an amount of money that Ria would never in her whole life have spent in a beauty salon. She had thought it was a complimentary treatment. How humiliating. She must show no hint that she was surprised.

'Of course,' she said.

'Carlotta wanted you to have a fifteen per cent discount so that's all built into the check and service is included,' Katie said.

Ria handed over the money with a sickening feeling that she was a great fool. Why should she have thought that this woman was giving her a free treatment? She was living amongst people who took beauty salons as a matter of course. Possibly if she had done so years ago she might not be in the position she was in now.

Gertie had arranged to be in Tara Road when Marilyn arrived. Ria had said that there just had to be someone here to open the door. It was a high priority.

'Suppose, just suppose, Gertie, that there's any crisis or anything, you will make sure that my mother's installed here instead of you, won't you?'

'Crisis?' Gertie had asked as if such a thing had never occurred in her life.

'Well you know, anything could happen.'

'Listen, there's going to be someone to meet her.' Gertie spoke very definitely. And just as Gertie was leaving her house to head to Ria's she got the message that Jack was in hospital. There had been a fight somewhere last night and Jack had only recovered consciousness now. Gertie ran down the road to the little house where Nora Johnson lived but she wasn't at home. Possibly gone to St Rita's, her neighbour didn't know. Gertie damned Danny Lynch to the pit of hell. All her anger was directed at him. If he hadn't abandoned his wife for some pale-faced child none of this would be happening. Gertie would not be running from house to house looking for someone to open Ria's door and greet some American woman. Jimmy Sullivan said that Frances was at the thrift shop and wouldn't be able to get away.

Gertie ran to the restaurant. Please, please let Colm not have gone to a market or anything. Please, God, if you are there, and really I know you are there, let Colm Barry be at home. He's fond of the Lynches, he'd do it. And he'd be nice to the woman. Please.

Gertie never prayed to God to ask him to make Jack behave like a normal man. Some things were too big even for the Almighty to undertake. But something like Colm being in could happen. And did happen. 'Let me drive you somewhere first, Gertie. She won't be in for another half-hour.'

'No, no, I couldn't let Ria down.'

'We know she's going to come in to the city, look around for a few hours and then come here at twelve, that's the arrangement.'

'She might come early. Anyway I can go on the bus.'

'I'll drive you. Which hospital?'

As they sat in the car Gertie twisted a handkerchief in her hands, but there was no conversation. 'You're very restful, Colm, really you are. Anyone else would be asking questions.'

'What's there to ask?'

'Like why does he do it?'

'Why ask that question? I did it for so long myself, people were possibly asking that question fairly uselessly about me all over the shop.' He was very reassuring, just what she needed. She stopped tearing at the piece of cotton in her hands.

'Maybe people would ask why I stay with him?'

'Oh well, that's easy. He's very lucky, that's all.'

'How do you mean?'

'I had nobody to stay with me, no one to cushion things, so eventually I had to face it, what a lousy life I had.'

'Well, doesn't that mean being on your own might have made you strong?' Gertie's face was anguished. 'That's what my mother's always telling me. She says give him up and he'll come to his senses.'

Colm shrugged. 'It could work, who knows. But I'll tell you one thing, coming to my senses was no bloody fun at all because all I came to was a hollow, empty life.' He left her at the gate of the hospital and drove back to welcome Ria's American.

Marilyn told herself that Ria's instructions about what to do on arriving in Dublin had been excellent. They had agreed not to meet, since it would be a rushed, hopeless meeting, with one arriving and the other leaving. Marilyn's overnight plane would be in by seven o'clock, Ria advised that she should get a bus to the city, leave her bags and walk up to have breakfast in a Grafton Street coffee shop. This way she would pass O'Connell Bridge on the River Liffey, the entrance to Trinity College, and she would see the various bookshops and gift stores which she might like to explore later. After breakfast she should go up and walk around St Stephen's Green. A few statues and points of interest were listed and a gentle itinerary, ending up at a taxi rank where she should take a cab, pick up her luggage and head for Tara Road. One of the people already mentioned would be there to welcome her in and show her around. It had all gone extremely well. The city began to fall back into place for Marilyn; she had not properly remembered the whole layout from the brief visit before. It had certainly changed and become much more prosperous in the intervening years. The traffic was much denser, the cars bigger, the people better dressed. Around her were foreign accents, different languages. It was not only the American tourists who came to the craft shops nowadays, the places seemed full of other Europeans.

Around eleven thirty her feet were beginning to feel tired. Ria would be boarding her plane just about now. It was time to find her new home. The taxi-driver told her a long complicated tale of woe about there being too many taxis allowed on the streets of the city and not enough work for them. He said that most people were on the take all the world over, that he was sorry that he hadn't emigrated to America like his brother who now had a toupee and a German wife. He said that Tara Road was the fastest-moving bit of property in Dublin. A regular gold-mine.

'If your friends own that house, ma'am, they're sitting on half a million,' he said confidently as he drove in the gateway and drew up at the foot of the steps.